Half Man Half Biscuit - Used To Be In Evil Gazebo Lyrics

I’m sitting in my Ladbroke Grove
Waiting for the NME
They’re coming down to interview me
But I haven’t told the others, ‘cos they’d mess around and burp, and tell the truth and laugh at me for drinking a classic red bottled by a medal-winning estate on the banks of the Garonne

So then Bern, it seems every track on the EP involves death, drunkenness, desperate poverty, diabolical dealings, incest, murder and abandonment. Does this reflect your current state of mind?

Well you know I have days. Those songs were written a few years back when I had a few problems with someone very close – things started to weigh me down – and I generally don’t like to talk about it, you know.

Okay yeah, no problem.

What it is you see, is that you can love someone and hate them at the same time, and I felt like I was on a tightrope, kind of like a precipice – it was all a bit deranged, and I guess that comes through in the music.

Yeah sure. Your guitarist used to be in Evil Gazebo. Has that been an influence on your sound do you think?

Well those particular songs were more about the descent into madness which I found myself falling into. So obviously I wrote those songs through nothing really to do with erm, this new guitarist… and er, it’s all to do with the ensuing psychiatric help, which I suppose is in evidence within the lyrics. As I say, I don’t want to go into that too much.

Right yeah. Your ex-girlfriend informs us – errm – after her new band of course Pankhurst entered the charts last week – that your treatment as such was at a voluntary day ward and you went along there purely to get people into thinking you were the new Nick Drake.

I’ve been in a mental hospital
I’ve been in a mental hospital
But I don’t like to talk about it – all the same
I’ve been in a mental hospital
I’ve been in a mental hospital
I’ve been in a mental hospital

I looked at the colour booklet they gave me in town
There was a picture of a young boy on the cover playing table tennis with a big friendly bear
An owl was umpiring, and in the background, The Tindersticks were opening the Hamilton Bland Memorial Swimming Pool
Behind an ancient oak a figure stood with his head hung down in shame like an actress leaving a divorce court
He’d been found guilty of wearing a Brazilian shirt with a number 10 on the back and swigging from a bottle of lager, whilst talking of the beautiful game
Up on the beacon a balladeer with a big nose belted out a broadside